Listen: The Offspring release Christmas single 'Bells Will Be Ringing'

It’s the punk band’s second Christmas song in three years

Author: Paul TraversPublished 14th Nov 2022
Last updated 14th Nov 2022

The Offspring have released a new Christmas single, ‘Bells Will Be Ringing (Please Come Home For Christmas)’.

The song is a take on the Charles Brown holiday classic ‘Please Come Home For Christmas’ and rather than punking it up with distorted guitars, the Californian band play it reasonably straight.

37 of the best rock, punk and metal Christmas songs

It’s the second Christmas song they’ve released recently, following 2020’s cover of the 1963 Darlene Love track ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’.

Listen: The Offspring – ‘Bells Will Be Ringing (Please Come Home For Christmas)’

Frontman Dexter Holland said of the release: "We've always loved the classic Charles Brown version of this song and think it's really underappreciated.

"We thought it would be the perfect follow up to 'Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)' in continuing on the coming home for Christmas theme."

‘Please Come Home For Christmas’ was written and recorded in 1960 by Texan blues singer and pianist Charles Brown.

It was made famous by The Eagles in 1978, however. The song was also covered by Jon Bon Jovi on the 1992 holiday album ‘A Very Special Christmas 2’.

Holland recently revealed that The Offspring are already working on the follow-up to last year's ‘Let The Bad Times Roll’ album.

Watch: The Offspring – ‘Let The Bad Times Roll’

They are also set to feature in the Punk Rock Museum opening in Las Vegas in early 2023.

“Punk has influenced popular culture for decades,” museum co-founder Vinnie Fiorello, the former drummer for Less Than Jake, told Artnet’s Vittoria Benzine.

“Seeing the roots of the punk movement and then looking at what it becomes, you realize how much it is woven into design, art, music, fashion.”

Alongside Green Day, The Offspring helped usher in the mainstream explosion of US punk in the mid-90s.

Their aptly titled 1994 album ‘Smash’ sold more than eleven million copies, making it the best-selling album released by an independent record label.

Gallery: Jobs rock and metal stars had before they were famous, including The Offspring guitarist Noodles

Kurt Cobain – Janitor

During Nirvana's embryonic stages, the teenage Kurt worked as a janitor to help fund the band. Bassist Krist Novoselic said: "Here was a man who would never clean his kitchen or take out the garbage, or do those kind of chores, but Kurt Cobain was not a lazy person. Basically he cleaned toilets – that's how he paid for (our first) demo."

Chris Cornell – Fish Handler

Long before his Soundgarden days, the late-great Chris Cornell earned a crust working for his seafood wholesaler. A far cry from his eventual lifestyle as a rock star, Chris told Seattle Post-Intelligencer a few years back: "My job was to wipe up the slime and throw away the fish guts. I met pretty much every sous-chef in town because they would come in and look around at what we had. I think we had the best wholesale seafood in town. The owner was impeccable about it."

Ozzy Osbourne - Slaughterhouse worker

Before Black Sabbath, Ozzy was a jack-of-all-trades working as a construction site labourer, trainee plumber, apprentice toolmaker and car factory horn-tuner. However, it was his job in an abattoir that left a lasting impression on Ozzy. "I had to slice open the cow carcasses and get all the gunk out of their stomachs," he said. "I used to vomit every day; the smell was something else."

Lars Ulrich – Tennis player

The Metallica drummer has tennis in his blood; both his dad Torben Ulrich and granddad Einer Ulrich were professional tennis players for Denmark. Instilled with a love of the game and ranked in Denmark's top 10 for his age, at 16 Lars attended the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida but realised it wasn't for him: "At the academy, I realized that my ability wasn't enough to be a successful professional, far from it, and the discipline necessary was not in me." Lars still plays tennis "once or twice" a week.

Bon Scott – Postman

The AC/DC legend was a postman in Fremantle, Western Australia in his late teens. Tenuously linked, postmen now deliver mail to Bon Scott Crescent in Moncrieff, which was named in the late singer's honour earlier this year. Other notable people who were postmen include Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney and Steve Carell.

Lemmy – Jimmy Hendrix’s roadie

A far cry from some of the humdrum jobs on this list, the late Motörhead legend became a roadie for the Jimi Hendrix Experience in his early twenties when he was sharing a flat with Noel Redding and the band's manager Neville Chesters. He was paid £10 a week to go on tour with Jimi plus the extra incentive of "handfuls of acid."

Keith Richards – Tennis ball boy

The legendary Rolling Stones axeman worked as a ball boy at a tennis club as a young lad – predominately for his mum and dad Doris and Herbert! He says: "My parents played tennis and I was dragged every weekend to the court as their ball boy, so I got to know the ins and outs of the game!"

Joe Strummer – Gravedigger

In his early 20s Joe decamped from London to Newport, South Wales, where, alongside being the part-time frontman of band The Vultures, he worked as a gravedigger at St Woolos Cemetery. When the band split in 1974, Joe packed in his job and moved back to London and formed new rockabilly outfit The 101ers.

Mick Jagger - Porter in psychiatric hospital

While he was a student at the London School of Economics in his teens, Sir Mick worked part time as a porter at the Bexley Mental Hospital. Brought up in the nearby Wilmington, Mick (who is worth an estimated £260million) was paid a reported four pounds a week.

Gene Simmons – Assistant to Vogue magazine editor

The young Chaim Witz (who later renamed himself Gene Klein) was a self-certified "excellent typist" and in the mid-sixties landed himself a job as an assistant to an editor at fashion bible Vogue Magazine. Fortunately he downed the typewriter and a few years later started KISS with Paul Stanley. The rest, they say, is history.

Eddie Vedder - Security Guard

In the early nineties, Eddie worked a variety of jobs including as a contracted security guard at La Valencia Hotel in San Diego. After the demise of his first band Bad Radio in 1990, Eddie worked as a night attendant at a petrol station. Fortunately, his fortunes changed when friend and ex-Red Hot Chilli Peppers member Jack Irons handed him a demo from a band looking for a new frontman.

David Bowie – Butcher’s delivery boy

After discovering the life-changing music of Little Richard, the 10-year-old David Jones quickly decided he wanted to be a saxophone player for his musical idol. Determined, David got a job as a butcher's delivery boy to fund the purchase of his first instrument and took his first tentative step on his glittering music career.

Freddie Mercury – Market stall trader

Freddie and Roger Taylor both had separate stalls on the top floor of the now demolished Kensington Market in London in the early seventies. Alongside clothing items, Freddie sold many of his own paintings and drawings on the stall and even continued to work there when Queen released their self-titled debut album in 1973.

Tony Iommi – Sheet metal worker

The heavy metal pioneer aptly worked with heavy metal pre-fame. The much-fabled story goes that aged 17, Tony lost the tips of his middle and ring finger on his right hand in an accident at the metal factory, however, inspired by jazz musician Django Reinhardt (whose fourth and fifth fingers were paralysed from burns) it did little to thwart his enthusiasm for guitar playing. With the aid of thimbles, over the ensuing years Tony honed his inimitable and influential metal sound.

Tom Araya – Respiratory therapist

The bassist/vocalist used his job as a certified respiratory therapist (dealing with air mixture ratios, drawing blood, asthma and more) at the Brotman Medical Centre in California to partially fund Slayer's debut album 'Show No Mercy'. Pleased he escaped the humdrum life, Tom told KNAC: "I'd get up in the morning and deal with traffic; and then leave at three and deal with traffic." He was at the hospital when Michael Jackson was treated for burns in 1984.

Jonathan Davis – Embalmer

After studying at the San Francisco School of Mortuary Science, Jonathan became a professional embalmer. Speaking to The Guardian in 2015, Jonathan said mortuary college was an intriguing experience: "I've pulled so many dead bodies out of cars. It's like a puzzle. Trying to figure out how someone died. It gave me attention too. It was f*ing weird. I got into it for attention and ended up liking it.

Noodles - School janitor

The Offspring guitarist, (real name Kevin Wasserman) was a school janitor at Earl Warren Elementary School in Garden Grove, California not only before The Offspring, but also throughout the band's early days. Talking to Kerrang! magazine he explained "Even when we blew up, I didn't even quit my job outright – I took a three-year leave of absence. I was still working there when we were blowing up 'cause I'd promised my boss I wouldn't quit until the end of the school year. There was this one high school girl that I knew (there) and she used to see me in the morning and say to me, 'Man, what are you doing? I just saw you on MTV!'"